October 11, 2004

IT JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER

The swing back to the Coalition and the emergence of Family First means the Government is close to gaining control of the Senate for the first time since under Malcolm Fraser in 1976.

According to Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett, this is "a disaster for democracy." Which is true, if you define "democracy" as "being dicked around by unpopular, legislation-blocking mutants." What might Coalition control of the Senate mean? Mark Metherell explains:

The Prime Minister would be able to push through his long-held ambition of selling the Government's remaining 51 per cent share of Telstra and further strengthen employer rights at the expense of the unions. Mr Howard would also be able to lower taxes on high incomes ... control of the Senate would enable the Coalition to abolish compulsory voting.

Bring. It. On. I swear, if Howard wastes any Senate advantage (as Fraser did) I’ll personally hunt him down and stake him to an ant bed.

He represents a party that few Australians had heard of before this election. He has never before stood for Parliament. And on Saturday, in his first crack at federal politics, he secured just 1.9 per cent of the Senate vote in Victoria.

But thanks to the amazing quirks of Australia's preferential voting system, Steve Fielding, 43, could soon find himself in one of the most important jobs in the country.

Posted by Tim Blair at October 11, 2004 04:19 AM

Comments

According to Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett, this is "a disaster for democracy." Which is true, if you define "democracy" as "being dicked around by unpopular, legislation-blocking mutants."

The outcome of a democratic process, is the death of democracy - that Bartlett's hit the bottle again...

If Howard wastes the oppotunities gained from control of the senate, there will be a rather LONG line of people wishing to stake him out over an ant bed, however unlike Tim's more or less friendly staking out over a mere ant's nest, most will refine the staking out by pouring on honey, choosing a large & nasty Bull Ant nest, use wet greenhide for the bindings, choose mid summer in Cloncurry for the staking out, etc etc etc... & we are all keeping in mind that Howard was a very large part of the Fraser govt.

Steve at the pub, bear in mind that Howard was an economic rationalist ("dry") from a long time back - that was one of the main causes of friction between the two and is the main reason why the useless old fuck is estranged from the party

Now I get it, if you give a few mums and dads shares in Telstra and turn them into Capitalists, they vote like Capitalists. Well after the next Telstra share sale just watch the electoral slaughter of Labor. Mr Howard’s secret weapon is the Telstra sale, and don’t the lefties just know it.

Family First is a right-wing, model of a Southern US Christian conservative? Hmm…

“ Mr Fielding said his strong Christian values would not blinker his performance in the Senate. "We are for freedom of choice, freedom of speech and freedom of religion," he said. “On abortion, Family First believes in informed consent.”

Wow, you Aussies haven’t ever met the real thing, have you? Mr. Fielding’s stance on abortion alone would be considered sinful and be enough to get him thrown out of most Evangelical churches in the South. Marriage and family is strictly between a man and a woman. Divorce and single parent families are frowned upon as is premarital sex or sex in general for that matter. No drinking, smoking, sinning—which includes just about everything else. Sunday is mostly spent at church, mornings and evenings and considered a day of reflection, as is Wednesday night prayer service with Bible study thrown-in the rest of the week typically Friday nights. 10-20% tithing is mandatory. Most will all their possessions to the church when they die, to “the Glory of the Lord”. Some get so infatuated with the "power of prayer" and “trusting in the Lord”, they have been known to pray for "a good parking spot"! The Bible is the literal “Word of God”, so screw Darwin. And YES, the earth WAS created in seven days and NO, there is no evolution—carbon dating is just weird science. Add to that the rubric of "eschatology". To pass on their views to their children they have either church schools or home-schooling. Several universities forbid dating and even hand holding among students. It is paradoxical that a nation that holds the majority of the Noble’s is the sciences and half of the world’s top research universities can in fact have been home to the infamous “ Scope’s Monkey Trial”.

Steve at the pub, bear in mind that Howard was an economic rationalist ("dry") from a long time back - that was one of the main causes of friction between the two and is the main reason why the useless old fuck is estranged from the party

Yep, wikipedia says:

He favoured cuts to personal income tax and business tax, lower government spending, dismantling the centralised wage-fixing system and privatising government-owned enterprises. These conservative views dominated his subsequent career. He became frustrated that the more pragmatic Fraser would not embark on these radical steps. In 1982 he nearly resigned in protest at Fraser's big-spending pre-election budget.

I'm not too happy about these Family First guys. I've just been looking at their website, and:

a) They oppose stem cell research, and
b) They want to construct a Great Firewall of Australia to block pornography. What's more, they want to have a special tax on all internet users in order to pay for the blocking.

If Howard makes a deal with them on either of these issues, then I'm gonna be the one staking him to the ant bed.

Most will all their possessions to the church when they die, to “the Glory of the Lord”.

Ah yes, the sure sign of a fanatic: leaving money to "charity".

Some get so infatuated with the "power of prayer" and “trusting in the Lord”, they have been known to pray for "a good parking spot"!

Dear Lord! Will these shameless wackos stop at nothing? You'd actually think they believed that some superior being cared about their pathetic little existences.

To pass on their views to their children they have either church schools or home-schooling.

How dare they have the temerity to teach their beliefs to their children instead of handing them over to be programmed by the state!

It is paradoxical that a nation that holds the majority of the Noble’s is the sciences and half of the world’s top research universities can in fact have been home to the infamous “ Scope’s Monkey Trial”.

Yes, you'd think that a country like, say, the USSR, with state-mandated atheism, would have been a scientific utopia without all those crazy lunatic Fundies running around distracting everyone.

I'm glad you got you hipboots, Sarah. He left an awful lot of horsesh*t, among them "mandatory" tithing, getting thrown out of church, sex in general frowned upon, Sundays a day of reflection, willing *all* your possessions to the church, etc...

Well what a terrible thought- people who think and pray- in Parliament-we might at least have some courtesy and respect back in Parliament.
We want people who respect who ever is in Goverment and in particular the Office of Prime Minister- whatever one may think of the person who holds office - it behoves our elected memebers to Respect 'THE OFFICE '.
Much that the Family First states as their platform, I may query, but at least I know what they stand for unlike the Greens who are a dangerouse neo fascist group who use a naive group of caring 'tree huggers' cover for their real agenda.

Well ... another Liberal government. That's democracy I guess. Can't deny the voice of the people, even if I don't agree. What I'm worried about is this deal with FF. Will John Howard be supporting their 'burn the lesbians' stance? How about their view that bottle shops and Mosques are bastions of evil? Mass geographical censorship of the internet?

Some people will do anything for absolute power, which, incidentally, is extremely dangerous no matter who wields it.

Donnah, yeah, I dunno where Michael meets these people. I was raised in a very active fundamentalist family and I never met anyone remotely that weird (in fact, I was the only homeschooled kid in my church, and I was the one who turned out to be an evolutionist--go figure). Maybe he hangs out at TBN.

One single FF party worker in Brisbane said this. Immediately expelled from Family First. OTOH, I remember attending more than one left-wing meeting in the 1980s when someone would earnestly explain the justice and necessity of the ANC practising "necklacing" on those South African Blacks uppity enough to get themselves elected as local councillors. Or uppity enough to be relatives of elected local councillors. For tha good o' tha stroogle, broothas. I don't recall any of these individuals being suspended or expelled anywhere near as quickly, or at all.

> How about their view that bottle shops and mosques are bastions of evil?

Well, the people running mosques would themselves agree that bottleshops are evil. So either it's true that bottleshops are evil (in which case Danny Nalliah is only 50% insane), or else, if bottleshops are not evil, then people running mosques are themselves insane, in which case it also follows that Danny Nalliah is only 50% insane. It's coherent for a Pentecostal to hold that both mosques and bottle shops are evil, but it's not coherent for a non-Pentecostal to think it's self-evidently insane to hold that both mosques and bottle shops are evil.

Jesus, Uncle Milk. You attended these meetings where necklacing was condoned and didn't call for expulsion or suspension!? How can you use this to defend FF? Just because certain people (yourself included) who were party to these comments didn't get up in arms doesn't mean it justifies letting FF get away with it.

And your logic on the bottle shops/mosques issue is just bizarre (and let's not forget his views on Buddhists and Hindus either). God, man! FF can believe what they want, so can Muslims, so can Pentecostals. Suggesting we force these beliefs on everyone else through legislation is where Nalliah showed himself to be a true fuckwit.

Jesus, Uncle Milk. You attended these meetings where necklacing was condoned and didn't call for expulsion or suspension!? How can you use this to defend FF? Just because certain people (yourself included) who were party to these comments didn't get up in arms doesn't mean it justifies letting FF get away with it.

Huh? Same post by Uncle Milk you're so incensed by:

One single FF party worker in Brisbane said this. Immediately expelled from Family First.

Sure looks to me like FF themselves aren't "letting FF get away with it". What was your point again?

I "attended" campus meetings as a wide-eyed teenager very curious to find out the answer to "Can Marxism be Blamed For The Crimes of Stalin?" Gosh, I wondered, what are the odds the answer will be [A] "No, Stalinism only happened because Trotsky couldn't Export The Revolution Worldwide quickly enough, so the solution next time is to give the Marxists control of the entire planet instead of one backward country" instead of [B] "Yes, Marxism did lead to Stalinism, because when you adopt an ideology that declares human nature to be irrelevant, you end up killing or jailing a lot of people who are not going to conform to your textbooks".

I've been moving gradually to the Right ever since then. I’ve been a Labor supporter since 1987 and an ALP member since 1991. Yet, now, in 2004, I'm strangely not-unhappy that Howard was re-elected. Something about the ALP since Hawke left has seemed very off-kilter: that Labor regarded it as a higher priority to get rid of the Queen than to get rid of Saddam…

And re Nalliah and the dens of Satan; if quoted correctly, he was calling on his followers to pray against them:

"Spot Satan's strongholds in the areas you are living in (brothels, gambling places, bottle shops, mosques, temples -- Freemason/Buddhist/Hindu etc -- witchcraft)," he said. "If you are ready to pray against it, do so. If not, bring it to your church and ask your intercessors, through the pastor, to pull these strongholds down." -- Ian McPhedran, "Satan enters Senate race", Herald Sun (Monday 4 October 2004), p 12

IOW, Nalliah was calling on God to pull another walls of Jericho trick, not on his followers to take matters into their own hands. A distinction often lost on non-Christians who believe that if there's no God, then anything you want done, and that's not immoral, you have to do yourself. Logical if you're an atheist, but for Christians there's a very big gap between "It would be nice if X happened" and "Let's take it into our own hands to make X happen". (This comes up in the euthanasia debate; Christians are okay with doping up a terminally ill person on painkillers to see if they die naturally, but object to pulling the plug or inserting the needle oneself.)

Also, IIRc, Nalliah himself is a former Muslim who had to escape Pakistan to save his life after he dared to convert to Christianity, so I'd cut him much leeway if he uses harsh words about Islam (but not about bottle shops. Un-Australian).

By "letting FF get away with it", I mean the Liberals rewarding a party that holds such views with a Senate deal. Nevermind that the fella who made the lesbian comment was expelled. There's more than enough bigoted filth still within the party. My problem with Milk's comment was his apparent belief that attending a 'left-wing meeting' (?), hearing some disgusting suggestions and doing bugger-all about it has any relevance to this issue.

I should add, for the uninitiated, that "pulling down strongholds" is Pentie-speak for "pray to God to defeat the bad guys spiritually". Pentecostals use a lot of set phrases -- often lifted from some particular passage in the Bible -- that are freighted with meaning for the in-group but meaningless or misleading to outsiders.

Example: "Catch the Fire" means "get zapped by the Holy Spirit, start speaking in tongues etc". "Standing in the gap" means "Pray to God to intercede for someone else" (wayward teenage nephew, etc). I once listened in on a conversation between an AOG member and an ALP operative that foundered on the complete incomprehension between the two. AOG said "John's busy, he's standing in the gap" and ALP replied "Standing in The Gap? State or federal seat?" (The Gap is a suburb of Brisbane).

And if they ask "Are you washed in the precious blood of the Lamb?", don't panic -- it just means "Have you ever been baptised as an adult by full immersion after making some profession of faith in Jesus?"

My point is that any political movement will attract hangers-on with extreme views. Blame arises for the responsible leadership of the group, not when someone around the fringes says something reprehensible, but when they do nothing to discipline the person. If it were otherwise, any agent provocateur could put on a "Liberal" T-Shirt, start mouthing off that "The Navy should blow these queue-jumpers and their boats out of the water", and thereby put certain-to-stick mud onto Howard. Or mutandis mutatis with any other political party or group.

I was never a member of any socialist group in my teens; just attended a few meetings where, as I said, the official speakers condoned ANC necklacing as a regrettable tactic of war. Compared to how quickly the FF leaders expelled the would-be lesbian-burner, the Trots failed the test.

I can give you a list of reprehensible statements I've overheard, over the years, made by individual members of pretty much every sizeable political party in Australia. That list however would be irrelevant to the merits of the parties they belong to. If you disagree with the Penties' policies, that's your right, but zooming in on the lesbian-burner as representative is as myopic as if I were to make out that every anti-apartheid activist from the 1980s was a would-be necklacer, or if every ALP voter on the Sunshine Coast wanted to pick up a Kalash and join the Moros.

"Blame arises for the responsible leadership of the group, not when someone around the fringes says something reprehensible, but when they do nothing to discipline the person."

Uncle, you mean like FF getting rid of their extremist posthaste, as opposed to, say, Latham/Labor allowing Mr and Mrs Milat-Molloy and their 'blame Bali deaths on the Liberal party' views to continue to represent them?

Karl, I would think twice about slamming the FF after they expelled a repulsive member (and for good reason). I don't know that you are a card carrying member of the left wingers, but you certainly sound like it.

I say that because a lot of extreme left wingers have advocated violence -- including murder -- in support of their anti-[insert cause here]. Certainly here in the United States; I can't say that for sure about Australia, but I'd bet on it.

The difference (as I see it) is that the FF accepted responsibility for the actions of their member -- and punished that action by expulsion.

Has the left done the same? Not here in the states!

My point comes to this: don't complain about the FF in general when the left (whose causes you clearly support) seldom cleans their own house.

I'm not a fundamental Christian, but I'll listen to the FF before I listen to the left simply because the FF behaves responsibly.

I am essentially a-religious. Don't really even understand the questions. About members of the Assembly of God, at least here in the states.

At a particularly low point in my life, very, very low indeed, I was abandoned by all but my family, and one, _ONE_ customer of mine, a fervent member of AOG. This man and his family gave me succor when those I had thought were friends not only deserted me, they seemed ashamed to be known to have known me.

When I asked him why, given the tenuousness of our relationship (it was friendly and commercial, only), he continued to support me, he replied, roughly, that "God required that believers stand by those in need especially when the need was greatest, and that he would be shamed before his Lord if he deserted me in my time of need."

Later, when my troubles ended and I was vindicated, I got some half-assed apologies from some so-called friends. They were willing to risk nothing on my behalf. Well, at least I learned who I could count on. My AOG customer never asked anything of me. How much better a person his belief seems to have made him.

I, for one, am sick and tired of the overtly religious being tarred with the smears of the Left. I cannot in good conscience claim to be a believer when I'm not, but I'll support them as one of them supported me, with a will and a heart full of thanks.

I always wondered which force would prevail in Frank Devine's mind: the irresistable force of voting to re-elect Howard in a (seemingly) tight contest, or the immovable object to proving that compulsory voting is evil.

This, Yank visitors, is why compulsory voting survives on the statute books here in Oz; because anyone who's ideologically libertarian or anarchist enough to be pissed off about it, usually also cares strongly about who wins the election, so they vote anyway. It's very hard to find people who are militant about their right to be apathetic.

OTOH, as someone who would vote anyway even without the $20 fine, rationally it should increase my relative political power if my vote was one out of (say) 8 million cast, instead of one out of (??) 15 million (assuming US/ UK turnout levels).